


Vanished

by Builder



Series: Originals [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Feelings, Gen, Panic Attacks, budding romance??, realistic science fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-16 19:26:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11835438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Builder/pseuds/Builder
Summary: Hildur is a disappearing girl with a disappearing sickness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case you missed the memo, this is an original. No fandom. Different from everything I've ever done before. 
> 
> This is my first time writing an original that has any kind of scifi/fantasy undertone. Hopefully it reads ok.

Hildur leans on the soap-streaked basin and sighs at her reflection in the bathroom mirror.  A stall bangs open behind her, and footsteps echo against the tiled floor and walls.  Another sink in the long bank flips on, and Hildur hopes the person using it is too engrossed in their own thoughts to give her a look. 

 

Her lips are white, tinged almost ice blue.  Her skin is the color of milk.  As she watches, Hildur’s hair, curling limply around her shoulders, shifts from tow-headed blonde to pure snow.  It’s mortifying, and it ratchets up the throb between her light teal eyes and the tremor in her pale hands.  _Calm down_ , she berates herself.

 

Why did she think she could handle this?  The commute to the university is hard enough, almost an hour on the hot, slow, exhaust-spewing bus.  Then there’s the class she chose.  Over a thousand dollars out of pocket to enroll in one semester of advanced painting where she can relax, have fun, and broaden her portfolio to strengthen her resume.  Or not.  Hildur hasn’t approached any of the goals in the first three of the sixteen scheduled classes.  And now she’s in the bathroom, not participating in the fourth.

 

It’s not getting any better the longer she stands there.  She needs to get out of the uncomfortably humid toilet, off campus, and get home where she can safely vanish.  The problem, though, is that all her stuff, her coat, her messenger bag, her paints, her barely-started still life, is still in the classroom.  And Hildur’s not sure she can make it down the hall without something horrible happening.

 

She has to, though, because she can’t keep doing this.  The heavy bathroom door creaks open, and someone clanks into a stall.  Hildur can’t still be here when that person finishes up.  It’s weird. Invites questions, like _are you ok _?__   To which she’d love to answer _why would I tell you?_

 

Hildur takes two deep, measured breaths.  Her heartrate slows by a couple of BPM, and her lips look closer to white than blue.  She crosses her arms over her chest and squeezes her own shoulders, and a glint of pale straw gold infuses her hair.  She looks marginally human.  She can do this.  She can hold herself here for a few minutes.  She has to be strong enough for that.

 

Hildur wraps both sides of her open-front sweater across her chest and tucks her fingers into her armpits as she steps down the hall to the classroom.  She lets her hair curtain over her eyes as she manages the door, holding the polished handle until it closes so it doesn’t slam.  There are probably a few students staring, but Hildur doesn’t look.  She trusts that her coloring is close to what it was when she left.  No one should have reason to suspect anything’s up, except that maybe she’s sick. 

 

Hildur’s easel and basic sketch of a painting are near the back of the room.  She immediately descends on her station and starts putting everything within reach into her crumpled canvas messenger bag.  It doesn’t matter if brushes aren’t clean, they can be dumped into a Ziploc bag and worked on later.  Hildur pauses to screw the cap on a tube of ocher yellow, her fingertips trembling and shifting white to ivory in the same rhythm.

 

“Hildur?”  The skinny grey-haired, soft-spoken instructor, Peabody, is standing on the other side of the rickety station. 

 

“I have to go,” Hildur whispers, not meeting the teacher’s eyes. She imagines they’re concerned behind his dark-rimmed glasses.

 

“Is everything ok?”  Not the exact phrasing, but there’s that question again.

 

“Hm.”  The cap of the paint won’t line up with the threading.

 

“You’re not feeling well,” Peabody quietly asserts.  It’s a reasonable assumption.  She’s really not, and considering the way she bolted out of class…  Why wouldn’t he think that?

 

Hildur stays quiet.  The instructor’s hands are coming toward her, pulling the ocher yellow from her lax, sweaty grip and screwing the cap on.  Light moves around Hildur’s eyes as her lashes flash through transparent to non-existent and finally back to neon blonde.  Her breath hitches.

 

“Think you’re ok to get home?”  Peabody hands her the closed tube of paint. 

 

Hildur nods, still looking down.  She dumps the ocher yellow into her bag along with the scarlet and cerulean and bag of soiled brushes.

 

“You can come in and work during any of my other painting classes.”

 

It can’t have been more than half a minute, but the conversation’s already gone on too long. Hildur picks up her bag, and she can see through her fingernails.  The flesh beneath is the cloudy, not-quite opaque color of saltwater.  She takes a deep breath.  Swallows the impending rush of tears.

 

“Have a good night.  Feel better,” Peabody says.  Hildur’s already out the door.

 

By the time she reaches the bus stop, she realizes she left her coat back in the classroom.  It’s nearing frigid outside, but the hood on her sweater will have to do.  There’s no way she’ll turn back, especially now that she’s let loose enough to almost relax and ride out the panic attack. Hildur sits on the bench alone, looking down and watching the ends of her hair shift white-blonde to white to silver to gone to white to platinum. 

 

_Breathe._

_You’re fine._

_Stop worrying._

_See, you’re fine._

 

When the bus huffs up to the sidewalk, Hildur tucks her hair into her hood and readies her public transit card.  She mounts the vibrating steps and becomes acutely aware of someone sprinting up to the vehicle behind her.  The soft gust of cold air and hitchy breathing makes Hildur bristle.  The red of the plastic card in her hand is shining through her skin. 

 

“Come on, you’re letting the heat out,” the bus driver complains. 

 

Hildur rushes the last two steps and jams her transit pass into the fare machine at the driver’s shoulder.  The touch-screen flashes for her to confirm she wants to use one of her pre-paid student fares. 

 

_Don’t think about it._

 

The machine doesn’t register when Hildur’s finger presses against the flashing __yes__.  It’s not surprising, but annoying.  And it unleashes the ridiculously unhelpful, inevitable stream of __oh shit, come on, come on…__

__

_Deep breath.  Swipe hand over opposite elbow. Adjust hood.  Deep breath.  Try again._ Hildur presses the touch screen again.  It still doesn’t take.  She rests her finger over the designated area while she exhales, willing shell pink into her fingernail.  Hildur closes her eyes.  The machine finally beeps, and she removes her card and hurries to an empty seat as a clammy sweat of relief breaks out over her brow.

 

She sits nearer to the window and leaves her bag half in her lap and half in the aisle seat.  The maneuver is meant to look careless, but it’s a deliberate move to keep the second seat empty at all costs.  Hildur’s not a fan of close contact.  Especially today. 

 

As soon as the bus pulls away from the curb, she turns her head into the window, her forehead lightly resting on the glass though her thin bangs.  Hildur feels both safe and exposed simultaneously.  She’s covered herself as well as she can and hidden her face.  Most people will be preoccupied with their commutes or books or mobile phones and not watching her.  Except for the people who take advantage of public discomfort and watch how others behave in such tight confines.  And then probably write books about them.

 

It’s over 10 stops to Hildur’s apartment.  She reminds herself again that she has time.  She’s fine.  _Breathe.  Calm down._   There’s almost time to take a nap.

 

And that’s what she pretends she’s doing, cuddled into the window, her breath fogging on the glass.  A muted stream of poppy hip-hop music floats back from the front of the bus, sounding pepped up and seasonally inappropriate.  Flo Rida or Pitbull, probably.  Something distinctly coastal.  A loose piece of Hildur’s hair starts to take on a sunkissed glow. 

 

Then, all of the sudden, out of nowhere, Hildur’s phone starts ringing, and it’s loud.  It’s a generic iPhone ringtone, but she knows it’s hers.  Her bag is vibrating.  Panic leaches into every cell of Hildur’s body.  It’s embarrassing to have the whole bus’s attention centered on her, and it’s not like she can reach into her messenger bag and answer the thing.  Hildur can tell without moving her head that she’s gone.  She can’t see her nose or her eyelashes, and her face-framing curls are hidden from view.  As surreptitiously as possible, she gathers the cuffs of her sweater over her hands so the ends of the sleeves don’t appear empty.  And all the while, the phone keeps ringing.

 

It’s torture.  Hildur can’t stop seeing it from everyone else’s point of view.  From their perspective, she was sleeping.  But then she was moving, shifting into the window to hide her invisible face and hands as soon as the phone rang.  Most people dig out their phones and reject calls when they don’t want to talk.  They must think her a jerk.  Or maybe an idiot.  There’s probably, oh, twenty minutes or so left in the ride home.  Hildur puts on the mental countdown clock and wills herself into existence again.

 

She tries to remember the words to the only Flo Rida song she knows. 

 

_Blow my whistle baby, whistle baby, something something something?_

_You just put your lips together and you come real close._

_Something whistle baby…_

_Here we go?_

__

Then some kind of whistling sound that doesn’t actually sound like a person whistling.  Maybe an instrument, like a flute.  Or an electronic representation of one?  Or maybe someone playing the flute, then the track electronically edited to remove breaths.  Like a photograph retouched to get rid of a blemish or a stray hair. 

 

Hildur doesn’t like the idea of editing.  Maybe that’s why she’s an artist and not something else like a writer.  If the spot of mold on a piece of fruit or a birthmark on a person’s face isn’t warranted for the canvas, she can just delete it before she even starts.  Fill in that spot with a different color or texture that’s more aesthetically pleasing, and then show the subjects the best versions of themselves in the finished product.  Assuming the subjects are not pieces of fruit.

 

But then, even better, is the method of just accepting things as they are.  Giving in to the fact that there’s no autotune in drawing, no erasers when it comes to watercolor.  Hildur and every artist she knows still struggles with it, but who doesn’t dream of handing the portrait subject an image, complete with every bad thing, every wrinkle and mole, and still show the subject the best of themselves?  Hildur tries, every time.  She just has trouble getting around the fact that if she did the same and painted the worst of herself, she’d have literally nothing to show.

 

She entwines her sweater-mitted hands in her lap and minutely shifts the fabric so she can see if she’s starting to materialize again.  It’s a huge relief that she is, though the back of Hildur’s hands are the color of tissue paper with a beach-glass map of networking veins.  Her hair starts to come back into her peripheral vision, light as the fur on an arctic fox.  From an outsider’s perspective, she probably looks like an ancient dying vampire.

 

Not her best look for sure, but at least Hildur has a body as she stands up and trembles down the aisle when the bus shudders to a stop at the top of her block.  Her hood’s still up, and enough people have entered and exited the vehicle since she got on that few of them are likely to discern a change in her complexion.  The thought gives her the most miniscule glimmer of confidence, which turns back to anxiety as she wishes her hair would hold off flooding with tow-headed blondness until she gets off the damn bus.

 

From the corner it’s a two minute walk to her apartment.  Once through the front door, Hildur dumps her bag, kicks off her shoes, and heads straight to the bedroom.  She collapses face first into her pillows, relishing the fact that she lives alone and hating herself for everything that’s happened.  She lets tears fall for a while and knows she’s flickering through shades of pale, but she’s soothed that no one will see.  Which ensures she stays fully visible.

 

A couple of hours pass before Hildur’s cried herself a new kind of headache.  She stumbles drunkenly away from her bed and out into living room.  She has soiled paintbrushes in her bag, and they’ll be ruined if she leaves them much longer.  Sandy blonde hair falls in front of her face as she rummages for the Ziploc.  Hildur paws past sketchpads and paint tubes before she locates the brushes at the bottom of the canvas messenger bag, along with the other small, heavy objects like her wallet and phone.

 

She hasn’t so much as glanced at her phone since it rang on the bus earlier.  She unlocks it and sets the voicemail to play, then tucks the device between her ear and shoulder as she takes the brushes into the bathroom and opens the cabinet to retrieve her cleaning supplies.

 

__“_ Hi, Hildur, this is Pierce.  Pierce Peabody, your painting instructor.  I, um.  I got your number from your student contact info.  I hope this isn’t weird.  But, um.  Anyway.  You, um, left your coat in class today, and I just wanted to let you know I have it, so you can get it next class.  Or at a makeup class, if you want to come make up what you missed.  And uh.  I hope you’re ok.  You, um, looked like you really didn’t feel good.  And, um, I know you live pretty far from campus, so I hope you made it home ok.  If you need anything, like, I don’t know, saltines or something.  Or I could bring your coat.  If you need it.  Ok.  I’m sorry, this is, just.  Um.  I hope you feel better.  You can call me.  If you want.  Ok.  Um.  Ok bye. _”__

 

It’s completely unexpected.  She doesn’t know what to make of it.  Her heart is throbbing in her chest, and the next breath is shallower than the last.  Hildur’s got about 10 years on the average college student, but Peabody’s still got to have at least 20 on her.  What’s he doing?

 

Hildur catches her own eye in the mirror as she arranges her brushes on a towel.  She’s surprised she has a visible reflection at all, let alone one that’s still holding on to color.  She’s paled, but her hair has faded to a flaxen glow and there’s a trace of warmth in her porcelain skin. 

 

How odd that certain things add to and take away anxiety in the human body.  Even in a body as extraordinary as hers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pierce has a migraine. Hildur appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These guys live on Tumblr. Please visit them or send reqs to me @Builder051.

Pierce gazes down at the coffee table to give his eyes a break from the glare of the TV.  The half-finished dish of microwave mac and cheese stares back.  He’s not inclined to eat any more, and he really should put it away before the cat decides it’ll make a nice dinner for her as well.  But he’s even less inclined to get up from the old armchair that’s suctioning him down to the earth.  Pierce considers the fork sticking up from the bowl and wonders if he could sever his head with it if he really tried. 

 

The throb circling his right temple is edging up to severe, and the pain is beginning to ricochet down to his stomach.  An isolated headache is easy to deal with.  A migraine, though, not so much.  It would be intelligent to turn off the TV and try to go to sleep, but the murmuring voices of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly are soothing under the screen’s obliterating brightness.  At least that’s what he tells himself. 

 

Pierce lets his eyes float closed.  Has he taken Excedrin yet?  He can’t remember.  Jagged-edged neon yellow shapes dance on the back of his eyelids, and fog seems to be pouring into his ears, muddling his thoughts into a multi-sensory mish mosh. 

 

The quiet sounds of the old movie taper into end credits music that lulls Pierce into semi-relaxation.  Vertigo bobs gently through his body, and with his eyes shut he can almost imagine he’s standing on the bow of an ocean liner, peering into a distant sunset…

 

Then his phone begins to ring.  Pierce scrambles to grab it from the coffee table and jam it to his ear.

 

“Hello?”  He thoroughly expects it to be his mother.

 

“Um.  Hi.  Peabody?  I mean, Professor?”

 

“Huh?”  Definitely not his mom.

 

“It’s, uh, Hildur.  From your painting class?”

 

Oh.  The day’s events speed back into Pierce’s recollection and collide like train cars behind his aching forehead.  The girl who’d gotten sick, left her coat.  The girl he’d called.  Left the weirdly romantic message.  Wished he could crawl under a rock.

 

“Hi.  Are you feeling better?”  Awkward for him to ask, given the current state of his own well-being.  And is he starting to slur?  He hopes it’s a hallucination on his end.

 

“I, uh, yeah.  I’m ok.”

 

“That’s…” Pierce’s mind is fuzzy.  He knows what he wants to say; it’s on the tip of his tongue. But he doesn’t feel confident it’ll come out the way he intends.  “That’s goo…se.  That’s good.” Damn aphasia.  Pierce takes a stabilizing breath and tries to shake it off.  “I have your coach.  I mean, coat…”  His jaw’s starting to feel slightly unhinged.

 

“Are you ok?” Hildur asks, concern coming through the slightly staticky phone line.

 

“Yeah.”  Pierce realizes he may sound drunk.  “It’s a head…ace.”  That’s not right.  “Head…ace. Migr…ation.”  His own voice sounds like he’s underwater, gargling and spitting out bubbles with each word.

 

“Peabody?  What’s wrong?”

 

“I’m ff—s’a ok.  Head…oh goddamnit.”  Why is it he never forgets or stumbles over swear words? 

 

“Are you having a stroke?”

 

Pierce exhales a strain of disconnected syllables which are supposed to mean that he’s absolutely fine, but betray pretty much the opposite.

 

“I’ll call an ambulance,” Hildur says with a note of fear.

 

“I—no.  ‘S fi…se. No.”

 

“No?  But there’s something going on.  You’re not well…”

 

“’s fine,” Pierce manages to whisper.

 

“What’s your address?”

 

He does his best to articulate __114 Bledsoe Street apartment 4b__ , but Pierce is pretty sure it sounds more like a groan.  Each breath is starting to edge up the throbbing in his head and push his stomach further into his throat.

 

“I can’t understand you.  I’m going to call 911.”  Hildur’s voice cracks, like she’s about to cry.

 

“No!” Pierce says with as much force as he can muster.

 

“Um.  Ok.  If you can text me your address in the next 5 minutes, I’ll believe you,” Hildur says. “But it sounds like you need help.  I’m going to hang up, and if I don’t hear from you, I’m calling 911.”

 

“Osh,” Pierce sighs.  It was supposed to sound more like __ok__. 

 

The line goes dead against his ear, and he lets his hand and his phone fall limply into his lap.  If there’s one thing he doesn’t need, it’s an ambulance ride to the ER charged to his lame-ass university-provided health insurance and billed to him.  Pierce squints at the device’s over-bright screen and starts a new text.  The sparkles in his vision nearly block out the conversation bubble he’s typing in, and he’s having a hard time telling the 1 from the 7.  It takes what feels like an insane amount of time, and his street name is misspelled, but finally he sends the message that seems to heavily hold his fate. 

 

The speech bubble on the small screen whizzes from the bottom to the top of the space, and watching it brings on a massive wave of nauseous dizziness.  Pierce leans forward to rest his elbows on his knees and bury his face in his hands.  He shoves his glasses up on top of his head, and he hears his phone tumble to the carpeted floor.  It chimes as a new text message arrives, but he doesn’t make an attempt to read it.  Pierce feels like he’ll float out of earth’s gravitational pull, losing his stomach contents all the way, if he so much as lifts his head.

 

And even sitting still, it’s not long before his mouth’s full of saliva and his jaw feels like it’s resting on the floor.  He heaves himself out of the armchair and makes for the bathroom, tripping over the cat in the process.  “Sorry, Mimi,” Pierce mutters, though the utterance brings on the first acidic gag.  He sinks to his knees and rests his forehead on the toilet seat.  The slight scent of bleach on the toilet water sends his sinuses into an explosion of pain, and he retches up a wave of undigested dinner and bitter coffee.

 

Pierce lurches forward to drape over the toilet as he vomits again.  Pressure builds in his head, and bile burns his throat, leaving him feeling even more awful.  He manages to disentangle the nose pads of his glasses from his hair and drop the lightweight frames onto the counter above his head. Pierce hears them clatter into the sink. 

 

It takes what feels like forever for his stomach to empty.  Each retch seems to take ages to build up with a fresh layer of sweat over his brow and the feeling of his entire torso trying to force itself up and out of him.  Finally he begins to dry heave, which is good news for his stomach, but still bad for his head.  The pain in his temple is akin to the strike of a hammer against a stubborn nail, and it continues to ripple out over his entire head and down into his body.

 

Someone’s knocking on the door.  Pierce starts, and vertigo assaults him as he reaches up to use the towel rack to pull himself upright.  He’s initially confused.  It’s night.  No one ever visits him.

 

“Peabody?!”  The shout is slightly hysterical, and definitely feminine. 

 

Then he recalls the phone call, the text message.  “Coming,” Pierce grunts in a hoarse whisper. Hildur won’t be able to hear him from this distance, but it’s a small comfort that his ability to form words seems to be at least somewhat functional again.

 

His hand is trembling as he reaches out to open the door, and Pierce leans heavily on the polished brass knob as soon as it’s swung inward.  Hildur’s standing there, panting, on the doorstep, but she looks nothing like he’s seen before.  Her face is ashen, and the long hair poking out of the front of her hood is pure white. 

 

“H…Are you ok?” Pierce asks before he has to forcefully swallow what feels like more stomach acid creeping up his throat.

 

“No, I, uh, it doesn’t matter,” Hildur mutters.  “What happened?  You’re really unwell.”

 

“It’s just a migraine,” Pierce sighs.  He can’t hold back a gag, and he presses the thumb-side of his fist to his mouth.  “Damnit.  Hold on,” he manages before returning to the bathroom. 

 

Pierce belches wetly over the toilet.  A trickle of bile comes up and clings to his lower lip.  He paws at the toilet paper roll and tears off a piece to wipe his mouth, then does a double take. Hildur’s followed him in, and is now sitting calmly on the mat in front of the sink.

 

“You don’t—you should go.  I’m not, uh, I’m not sick.  You’re sick, you should go home…”  He’s rambling a bit.

 

“I’m fine,” Hildur assures him.  “What do you need?  I, um.  Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?”

 

“It’s ok,” Pierce whispers through the square of toilet paper he’s loosely holding over his mouth. “I just get bad migraines sometimes.  Aura, aphasia, it’s all scary stuff, but it’s, uh, it’s not serious.”  He leans into the corner between the wall and the bathtub and tips his head back to see if it has any effect on the dizziness.  It doesn’t.  But when he looks back at Hildur, there’s a hint of color in her cheeks, and her hair is pale straw gold.

 

“Whoa,” Pierce breathes.  “Is, um?  Sorry, I might be seeing things.  Is your hair a different color?  Than it just was?”

 

Hildur looks down.  “Oh.”  The soft curls seem to shine and lighten before settling back to thesunkissed shade.  “Um.  Yes.”

 

“What…?”

 

“It doesn’t matter,” Hildur says.  “It just happens.  It’s, just, I don’t know.  Kind of embarrassing.”

 

“’S fine,” Pierce murmurs.  He suspends his face between his hands as a fresh wave of vertigo splashes up from his feet.  “You really can go.”

 

“Yeah.  You, um.  You don’t seem like you should be alone like this.”  She gestures a bit toward his huddled frame.

 

“I promise, I’ll be fine,” Pierce says.  Though at the same time, he thinks he should creep closer to the toilet again.  He reaches out and uses the toilet seat as an anchor to drag himself across the tile before the heave materializes. 

 

Pierce’s face is hovering below the ring of the toilet when he hears Hildur say softly, “Well, maybe I want to stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the ubiquitous phrase "(he/she/they) wished (he/she/they) were invisible" when referring to a character feel embarrassed or uncomfortable. I think it would be actually be quite a hassle and lead to increased anxiety.
> 
> Feel free to share any thoughts. Visit my OCs on Tumblr. I'm @Builder051.


End file.
